Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Putting our heads in the sand, as Mr Abbott—the Prime Minister—would prefer and ignoring the science will not help protect our children's future. We owe it to the next generation to stand up, to raise our voice and to fight for the action not just that we need to continue but that which we have already put in place.

We know that young people, in particular across this country are desperate for real action on climate change. In fact, when you look at the attitudes of voters and attitudes of citizens in this country, overwhelmingly the largest amount of support for direct action—that is, urgent action and action that will reduce emissions for climate change—is amongst Australia's youngest citizens. Why is that? I guess it is because it is their future that we are talking about. We must always be thinking of our younger citizens when we make decisions in this place.

This legislation reduces and takes away the responsibility of those who pollute the most to have to contribute to the cleaning up of our energy industry. Mr Abbott would prefer to use taxpayer money to pay the polluters than to make the country's biggest polluters contribute to schemes and our ability to tackle climate change. This is of course a market mechanism, so it is astounding to hear the negativity and opposition from government members to using the market as a way to reduce climate change and emissions and to drive the change we need in order to have us heading towards a clean energy future—a sustainable future where industry can rely on energy production that is clean, that is green and that will be there into the future.

As we know, Australia is rich in natural resources, but we have been exploiting our mineral resources for more than a century now. The good news is that, in my home state of South Australia, we have a wonderful supply of alternative natural resources that we can call upon. Whether it be solar, wind or even geothermal, South Australia is perfectly poised to make hay while the sun shines, and when it comes to renewable energy alternatives, the economic sun is certainly breaking through the clouds in South Australia. While our nation as a whole is committed to reaching a target of 20 per cent baseload power generation from renewable sources by 2020, South Australia, in 2014, has already achieved better than that, with a renewable power supply of over 21 per cent. The advantages of wind power are well understood in South Australia. Despite our size we produce almost half the nation's wind power capacity already. Yet Mr Abbott wants to tear all of that down and come in with his wrecking ball.

I would like to reference some words from Genevieve, a young woman from my home state of South Australia. She says: 'As a young Australian facing a future of climate change, it pains me to see the leaders of our world, and especially in my home country, acting in such a cowardly manner towards the biggest threats in our history. We need strong, affirmative action right now, and we need it to come from those who have chosen to be our representatives. We need our leaders to do what they have been chosen to do. We need our leaders to be courageous and to stand up and to lead.' When it comes to young people in South Australia, they are the ones who are driving our state; they are the ones who are investing in renewable energy; they are the entrepreneurs who are going to drive our sustainable industry into the future. It is that drive, that vision, that desire for a clean energy future that will provide jobs—that will ensure that the planet and the environment are protected for our next generation—that we must be drawing upon when we think about the legislation before us today.

The legislation before us today is incredibly short-sighted. It dismisses not just the science; it dismisses the fact that we are already seeing devastating impacts on our communities, particularly in our agricultural areas. It is dismissive of the fact that the rest of the world is trying its hardest to work together as a global community to tackle global warming and to tackle the dramatic rise in emissions over the last 50 years. Yet, here we have in Australia our Prime Minister, with his head stuck in the sand, wanting to say Australia is not going to participate in any of this future-driving in relationship to energy production and tackling climate change. It is not just disappointing; it is extremely embarrassing to see Australia trotting around on the global stage, with the Abbott government's ministers pretending we have nothing we need to worry about when it comes to global warming and climate change.

Well, here on this side of the chamber we know that the long-term cost of inaction is far too great. My Greens colleagues and I understand the urgency for action, and we will defend Australia's clean energy legislation at every opportunity. Sometimes in this place I wonder whether, if we had more young people putting forward their views and having their voices heard, we might get more insight into what type of country the next generation really would like us to become. Going backwards is not the option that young people across this country want us to take.